A single fluorescent tube offered the only illumination and threw shadows across his face as he let out an expansive belly laugh that resounded through the tea shop. The short, stocky, Balochi tribesman grinned widely through his beard. “Come, come my friend. We eat together, on the ground , on the ground, like the followers of the prophet.” He patted the earth next to him indicating I take a seat. “Come, come, my friend, mutton, for the fat, for the cold weather. “
I accepted his invitation and sat. Remembering what the left hand is for, I tore some naan bread with my right and dug into the communal pot of mutton stew, hungrily scooping up pieces of meat and gravy. He was right; the thick fatty stew was an effective shield against the increasingly bitter desert night.
As we ate I considered where I was. After about 4 hours on the bus, I guessed we must be half way to Quetta, the capital of Balochistan, by now, which meant we were in the middle of the Balochi desert with nothing but sparsely populated small tribal villages for miles in all directions. This was a fierce, rugged land, beautiful but hard and it bred tough hardy people who ate mutton fat, for the cold weather and ate on the ground like the followers of the prophet.
The Muezzin broke the silence, announcing the call to prayer and the men in the tea shop hurried to collect prayer rugs and wash up for the early evening prayers. My host stood and beckoned me to follow him. I hesitated. “I’m a Christian”. I explained, but he just shrugged.
“Come, come, come see.” Not wanting to offend him and feeling a little curious, I stood and followed as he crossed the road into the nearby village. Following the source of the Muezzin, we turned a corner into a small brick building with a speaker screwed to the wall. It didn’t look like a Mosque but he opened a door and walked in, signalling me to follow.
Inside were about 20 kids, all boys, ranging in age from about 6 to 14, all lined up for prayers. An older boy, about 14, stood at the front reading the lesson and an old man, I assumed the local Mullah, stood to one side with a cane in his hand.
My entrance caused a stir. The kids could barely contain their excitement and curiosity. They fidgeted and giggled and looked around at the strange foreigner who was standing at the back. One or two beckoned me to join them but I smiled and shook my head. The old man with the cane growled a warning and slapped his cane against his leg. The children reluctantly turned their attention to their prayers.
Then I understood. This was a madrassa, a religious school and these kids standing in front of me were “talibs,” religious students. I had heard about these places. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of such schools are dotted all along the Pakistan/Afghan border and many poor families, often refugee families, send their sons to these places where they are guaranteed a meal, a bed and an education of sorts.
These madrassas have long been of concern to Pakistani and Western intelligence agencies as breeding grounds for militant Islamism because the kids studying in them learn nothing but a literalist reading of the Quran. They learn nothing else. They come out of these madrassas mired in ignorance, with a world view based entirely on a literalist interpretation of the Quran and a strict fundamentalist interpretation of Islam
In the early 90s, after the various Mujahedeen factions had driven the Soviets out of Afghanistan, they turned on each other in bloody internecine fighting in a struggle for power which lasted for 2 bloody years and destroyed much of Afghanistan including Kabul which had survived the Soviet occupation relatively unscathed. The Mujahedeen fought artillery duels over the city, destroying much of it, killing thousands and losing what little trust or good will they had from the Afghan people.
In response to this never ending violence, religious students many just a little older than the giggling kids standing in front of me in that madrassa, were mobilised by the Pakistan intelligence services, the ISI, from out the hundreds of madrasas across the border region. They were given arms and sent across the border into Afghanistan where they determined to put an end to the endless conflict and to implement a regime based on their interpretation of Islamic law, This was the the birth of the Taliban. The name comes from the Arabic word “Talib” meaning student.
They swept across the country, largely unopposed due the respect to which religious students were held by ordinary Afghans and to the desperation of the population for someone, anyone, to just stop the fighting and bring peace.
In 1996, just a year after I stood in that little Madrassa watching those kids pray, the Taliban took power in Afghanistan and began a regime unparalleled in its severity and brutality since Pol Pots Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s. On taking power, they immediately banned all women from school and work and forbade any woman to leave the house unless accompanied by a male relative and wrapped in the all covering shapeless burkha . They banned all music, sports, dancing, games, TV, books and writing. They implemented public executions, including stoning to death for adultery and cutting off limbs for theft. They forcibly married girls as young as 12 to older fighters. In all they attempted to turn Afghanistan into their vision of a 7th century Islamic state.
I waved goodbye to the kids and left the madrassa with my new friend, who seemed pleased with himself that he had shown me inside the madrassa, He was polite and friendly but I had the feeling he hoped to convert me to Islam and that showing me the inside of the madrassa was meant to impress me. It didn’t. Fortunately, the language barrier prevented any real depth of conversation beyond a few words, making any serious attempt to convert me impossible.
We returned to the tea shop and I ordered cardamom tea for myself and my new friend. As we sat and sipped our tea, he said something that, unless I misunderstood completely, was rather sinister. Language was a problem so I can never be sure but what I understood was that he was trying to invite me to what he called a religious education camp further into the mountains. He explained that there were lots of foreigners there. Now, I could be completely wrong. I could be reading things into his invitation that weren’t there, it’s possible. However, I have gone over this in my mind time and time again over the years and I cannot dismiss the possibility that the camp he was inviting me to was some kind of Islamist recruiting camp. A religious education camp In the mountains on the Afghan border? A camp full of foreign volunteers? An invitation by a man who had just taken me inside a fundamentalist madrassa? This was a time when Al Qaeda and other Islamist groups were active in Afghanistan and Pakistan after all and they were actively recruiting foreigners. I will never know. I politely declined. Our bus beeped its horn to announce it was time to go and we boarded and drove away.
Over the past few weeks, I, like many people, have been following the news about the fall of Kabul, the chaos at the airport and the shocking news that the Taliban, having been overthrown in 1999, are now back in power. My thoughts inevitably have gone back to the day I met those kids in that Madrassa, so happy, so excited to see me. Just ordinary little boys; and I can’t help wondering what happened to them. How many of them grew up to join the next generation of the Taliban? How many took up arms and crossed the border into Afghanistan? How many of them fought and how many of them died in the civil war of the past 20 years?
Notes From Nowhere 